Hanok fish restaurant in Uiwang: kiosk-ordered mackerel pot rice set

Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo Baegun Lake Branch is a wood-fired grilled fish restaurant at 148 Neungan-gil, Uiwang-si, Gyeonggi-do, tucked a little inland from Baegun Lake. It's been a while since I had a good dinner near Baegun Lake, so let me introduce it.

Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo Baegun Lake Branch: hours, address and facilities

• Hours | 11:00–21:00
• Info | Parking, takeout, separate men's/women's restrooms

Where is the restaurant near Baegun Lake, and is there parking?

The exterior of Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo Baegun Lake Branch has that in-the-mountains feel, set a bit inland from Baegun Lake. There's a spacious parking lot, so we could park easily and walk straight into the restaurant.

Here's the exterior of Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo, a Baegun Lake favorite.

There's a wide parking lot right where the restaurant sits, so we could park comfortably and go straight in. It feels like you're heading a bit further inland from Baegun Lake! Being tucked in the mountains gives it this quiet, healing kind of vibe haha. Whoa, there was a place like this at Baegun Lake!? That's kind of the feeling lol.

Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo at Baegun Lake also had really great amenities and facilities. The restaurant is built out of a renovated old house, so the layout is really well thought out. Since it was reborn through remodeling, everything — restrooms, even a coffee vending machine — is set up right where it should be, which was honestly amazing haha. What I liked most was that the space felt roomy and never cramped. It already won me over in the parking lot haha. And of course there's the cozy comfort that only a hanok can give.

Inside the hanok: seating for big groups and small parties

Inside, Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo Baegun Lake Branch is divided into room-like spaces, so it easily handles group visits of 8–10 people or more. The interior layout was really well done.

Even if a large group visits, the spaces are partitioned like private rooms, so groups of 8 to 10 or more would fit easily. Of course, it was also a neat, tidy space perfectly suited to small gatherings of 2–3 people haha.

Menu and how kiosk ordering works

That day at Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo Baegun Lake Branch, we ordered two things: the mackerel hot-pot rice set and the barley corvina hot-pot rice set. You order through a kiosk, and it goes straight to payment.

That's what the menu at Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo looked like. I visited with my mom, and that day we both wanted mackerel and also really wanted barley corvina (dried, seasoned yellow corvina), so we ordered the barley corvina hot-pot rice set too haha.

It was so nice being able to order easily through the kiosk haha. And ordering flowed right into payment without any hassle — a clean checkout process haha.

What's on the self-serve bar, tteokbokki included

The real strength of Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo Baegun Lake Branch is the self-serve bar. You can freely help yourself to acorn jelly, macaroni salad, lettuce, japchae, seasoned lotus root, and even tteokbokki.

And the real upside of Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo is exactly this self-serve bar.

We could freely help ourselves to all sorts of side dishes and prepared foods.

Acorn jelly, macaroni salad, lettuce, japchae, seasoned lotus root, and even tteokbokki, T_T — every single one really suited my taste, and the tteokbokki especially was seriously delicious.

How were the mackerel and barley corvina pot rice sets?

The mackerel came out of the wood-fired oven perfectly golden-brown, and the rice from the hot pot was fluffy and separate, grain by grain. The barley corvina was surprisingly large in size.

After sitting and waiting a little while, the mackerel hot-pot rice set and the barley corvina hot-pot rice set arrived.

The dishes came out with the side dishes and soup all neatly arranged. The soup was so savory and delicious too haha.

Maybe because the mackerel came grilled from the wood-fired oven, it really looked perfectly golden-brown and well cooked.

And the rice at Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo!!! Being hot-pot rice made it even better!!! The grains were genuinely fluffy and separate, the real thing. The rice must have been good quality. After all, fish dishes taste even better when the rice itself is delicious haha.

This is the barley corvina that came out next. The size of the fish was genuinely huge, I was so surprised haha.

Putting a piece of mackerel flesh over the rice and eating it together felt like a royal feast, honestly.

Fish dishes are hard to cook at home because of the smell, and even if you do cook them, it's not grilled over a wood fire like this, so it's hard to get this kind of clean, fat-rendered flavor. I felt like this taste is something you can only get at Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo. For that reason, whenever I get a craving for mackerel, oily flounder, or barley corvina, I plan to keep coming back to Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo at Baegun Lake for a satisfying meal.

Barley corvina over chilled green tea rice

With barley corvina, mixing rice into cold green tea is basically the unwritten rule, right?? I topped the rice with pieces of the well-cooked barley corvina flesh one by one. Wow... this place is a genuine barley corvina spot...!! The green tea cuts through the fish's distinct saltiness and richness so cleanly — I've never had something so light and clean.

I visited with my mom, and she loved it so much haha. She kept saying let's come here often lol. And honestly, after one bite I also thought, ah, this place is the real deal... I'm going to become a regular lol. I genuinely, truly want to recommend Hwadeogeuro Gan Godeungeo to everyone around me as the go-to Korean set-meal restaurant at Baegun Lake.

As the weather turns a little chilly, how about a mackerel Korean set meal at Baegun Lake?